I was happy with myself today because I wasn't as distracted as last week (only a little... these weekends aren't long enough!). The Gizmos we played with today were pretty good, but I'm still not sure if I would include them in my lesson plans. The Gizmo that my partner and I worked with was the Transformation one. We tried really hard to find something practical to use it for, but it had too many flaws. One of it's biggest flaws was it's definition of rotation. The 'game' stated that rotation was a point rotation, while the questionnaire afterward stated that rotation was rotating around the Cartesian plane. This could be really confusing for students. After playing with some of these though, I am determined to make one myself. They don't see like they would be that complicated (after you have played with the programs that is). Maybe I will try and figure this out when we have some time off (Chirstmas time maybe!). Until now, I will keep playing with these new Gizmos: http://www.explorelearning.com/
Gizmos
I was happy with myself today because I wasn't as distracted as last week (only a little... these weekends aren't long enough!). The Gizmos we played with today were pretty good, but I'm still not sure if I would include them in my lesson plans. The Gizmo that my partner and I worked with was the Transformation one. We tried really hard to find something practical to use it for, but it had too many flaws. One of it's biggest flaws was it's definition of rotation. The 'game' stated that rotation was a point rotation, while the questionnaire afterward stated that rotation was rotating around the Cartesian plane. This could be really confusing for students. After playing with some of these though, I am determined to make one myself. They don't see like they would be that complicated (after you have played with the programs that is). Maybe I will try and figure this out when we have some time off (Chirstmas time maybe!). Until now, I will keep playing with these new Gizmos:
http://www.explorelearning.com/
Heather